Grateful Dead

Europe '72: The Complete Recordings - All The Music Edition

Europe '72: The Complete Recordings -All The Music Edition

Our Europe '72 boxed set is now officially sold out, with all 7,200 boxes now gone! We can't thank you enough for your support, for having faith in the project and taking the plunge to purchase this unprecedented release. Despite the fact that it's going to be a bit of a wait before it arrives on your door step, we are sure you'll be blown away with the results.

We are now offering the All-The-Music edition of Europe '72, which includes all of the music recorded on the tour, with each show in its own individual package, complete with its own liner notes by Dead scholars such as David Gans, Blair Jackson, Steve Silberman, Gary Lambert and others, as well as by attendees of some of the shows. You'll get 73 CDs and over 70 hours of prime Grateful Dead.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC...

Because you dared dream this might happen one day… Because you went down to the Gypsy Woman and offered up your first-born to try to make it happen… Because there are enough passionate Dead Heads at Rhino/GD who thought it might be cool for this to happen… It’s happening! Coming in September is a gargantuan EUROPE ’72 MEGA-BOX SET containing ALL 22 SHOWS of what is arguably the greatest tour the Grateful Dead ever played, on a whopping and clearly cosmic73 DISCS (over 70 hours of music!). Bet you didn’t see that comin’!

Really, at this point we probably don’t need to lay on too much hype about how wonderful the music is: Chances are, if you’re even considering buying a copy of this enormous box, you already know how amazing the Dead’s tour of Europe in April and May of 1972 was. To review briefly, though, the Dead’s first tour outside of North America took them to all sorts of historic and unusual venues in England, Denmark, West Germany, France, Holland and even tiny Luxembourg. Many members of the Dead “family” came along on what was really an extended working vacation that was designed to both expose the Dead to new audiences and also reward the band for their unlikely conquest of America during the preceding two years. As a hedge against the costs of the nearly two-month trip, the Dead’s label, Warner Bros., paid for the band to lug around a 16-track recorder to capture the entire tour… and we’re glad they did!

This was a band at the top of its game, still ascending in the wake of three straight hit albums — Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty and the live Grateful Dead (“Skull & Roses”). It had been a year since the lineup had gone to its single-drummer configuration, six months since Keith Godchaux had been broken in as the group’s exceptional pianist, and this marked the first tour to feature Donna Godchaux as a member of the touring band. There was a ton on new, unreleased material that came into the repertoire in the fall of ’71 (after “Skull & Roses” was out) and during the spring of ’72, including “Tennessee Jed,” “Jack Straw,” “Mexicali Blues,” “He’s Gone,” “Comes A Time,” “Ramble on Rose,” “One More Saturday Night,” “Black-Throated Wind,” “Looks Like Rain” and Pigpen’s “Chinatown Shuffle,” “The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)” and “Mr. Charlie.” (Sadly, this was Pigpen’s final tour.) All those future classics were interspersed with songs from the aforementioned “hit” albums—such as “Uncle John’s Band,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Cumberland Blues,” “Casey Jones,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Bertha,” “Not Fade Away,” et al — and then were topped off by loads of big jamming numbers — the Europe ’72 tour produced spectacular versions of “Dark Star,” “The Other One” “Playing in the Band,” “Truckin’,” “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider,” “Good Lovin’,” “Lovelight” and even the early Pig chestnut “Caution.” And that’s leaving out a truckload of other tunes, too! There wasn’t a clunker show in the bunch, and many are acknowledged today as classics. No doubt you already have some favorites.

Through the years, there have been a few releases of material from the Europe tour—starting with the 3-album Europe ’72 which knocked our socks off in the fall of that year, and followed many years later by material from a pair of German shows and the fantastic 4-CD Stepping Out, culled from the group’s eight shows in England. Incredibly, though, only one full show from the tour has come out previously: the excellent 4/24 concert in Dusseldorf, Germany, released as Rockin’ the Rhein in 2004.

Until now, that is. Jeffrey Norman, who has been the primary mixer of Dead archival multi-track material for the past 15 years (Fillmore West ’69, Ladies and Gentlemen…, Rockin’ the Rhein, Nightfall of Diamonds, etc.) has spent many months toiling over the 16-track masters from the tour, and will continue working on the mixes through the Winter and Spring, employing the high-tech Plangent Processes transfer and restoration tools, trying to get every show to sound “just exactly perfect” (as Bob Weir says) for this release. You might think you’ve heard that intense “Dark Star” > “Sugar Mag” > “Caution” from Copenhagen, but I guarantee you’ve never heard it sound this alive! Mastering to HDCD specs is two-time Grammy-winning engineer David Glasser of Airshow Mastering. Needless to say, all the songs that turned up on previous Europe compilations will be appear in their proper show contexts, and in the case of songs from the Europe ’72 album, without overdubs that were added later (where possible).

So dig deep, raid the penny jar, take a weekend job at Jack-in-the-Box, beg your kindly ol’ grandma for some of your inheritance early… Yes, it’s an extravagance, but jeez, you (or your loved one) deserve it! This is way cool.

Syracuse, if you came online tomorrow and saw Rhino offering, "Europe '72 and Rhino,, the Inside Story!", "Including interviews and photos of all involved." Wouldn't you be tempted to purchase? As long they didn't offer lots of "ephermia, extraneous gafargas and personalization" I would! Europe '72,all 22 shows. What a vision. Who would of thought it would ever really come to pass? Hey, where's my Capcha

Virtually NO mail order-based business has figured out how to deal with the vexing PO Box issue, and virtually all such businesses end up postponing delivery by a month or two if you try to CHANGE your address to a street address. It's just too hard to deal with, and what mail order business could even think they had to have a system in place for such an unlikely scenario?

So, I'm guessing that you got charged an extra $9.06 per set as a "we won't ship to a PO Box, but if we did we would charge you a premium, so let's continue to charge you a PO Box delivery premium even though we (finally) shipped to a street address" penalty.

Yup, on a scale of 1 to 10, its:

Music: 10
Rhino service: 1

I'll be interested in whether my ill feelings towards Rhino fade as they (eventually) ship the personalizations and correct the overcharge, and as I continue to love the music, or whether Rhino has lost me as a customer despite my love for the Dead. It is hard to imagine a company fostering such ill will despite being associated with such a great release.

I had the nerve to request a Europe 72 set be sent to my P.O. Box, which appears to have brought the shipping process to a sceeching halt! I imagine that several executive meetings were called in order to find a way in which to solve this particularly complex shipping problem. Box recently arrived, sans personalized sticker. Yet I maintain hope, as I now know that Rhino has discovered how to access the US Postal Service!
Sarcasm (mostly) in jest!
Lovin' the shows!

1) Congrats to both of you guys for keeping it civil and honest. Thank you.

2) I agree with both of you to an extent. I thought I was getting more "exclusivity" and "schwag" than I was when I coughed up for the box, but in retrospect, look at the phenomenal shows that got me...would I pay just to get access to this music, exclusivity aside? Absolutely!! The unfortunate fact is that Rhino now has us over a barrel in controlling the rights to the entire Vault...and there is a ton of great music in there that every one of us will be willing to sell our Grandmother's ashes to hear.

about these shows is not the more-or-less predictably great Dark Stars, Morning Dews, Playin' in the Bands, etc. but how freakin' great the Sugarees and One More Saturday Nights are. I'm on my 3rd time through this set -- not doing this programatticaly or intentionally, just noticed, yeah, choosing something I wanted to listen to, I've somehow picked every show on this release at least twice -- I'm just stunned by how great the routine songs are.

Take a show like Munich 5-18-72 that I'd never heard (or heard of) before. Knock-out versions of Playin', Dark Star AND Morning Dew -- SERIOUSLY?!

As to the sound quality -- I have honestly never heard the nuance and subtlety in Jerry and Bob's voices on any recording the way I've heard them on this release. I'm sure that lends a lot to my positive response to my less-than-favorites like Sugaree and Saturday Night, but whatever -- I am just stunned at how great these shows sound!

Thoroughly enjoyed your discourse. May have been a bit too civilized for my personal taste but enjoyable none the less! Really enjoying the music even more now. First time thru was mostly thru earbuds off my laptop of ipod. Without realizing there was this subtle pressure to get on to the next show and hear what it sounded like. Now I'm burning shows, at random, to cd and listening to them on the car stereo as I drive around during the day.
I find myself going, "Wow, that was just excellent I got to listen to that again!" And I do. Concertgebouw, Olympia Theater 05-03, Dusseldorf, have had multiple listens over the last two weeks. It's great realizing that Pigpen is in the mix here and there with his flourishes on organ. Listening to Keith coming into his own. I think you can even see why they thought Donna would be a good addition to the mix ;-). So much great music to explore.

This will be my last post as I'm starting to feel like I've gotten sucked into that difficult forum trap I've watched other people on other sites fall into. My reposting your comments was for the sake of anyone else reading and because it was much easier to show you what I was responding to. I simply did not want to twist or misrepresent your words. So please don't post that I had projected onto you that you wanted something you didn't, and then get upset and accuse me of belaboring the issue when I respond. That's not cool.

And yes, we can most certainly agree to disagree. Though I think it's less disagreeing and more misunderstanding one another, as I'm feeling a bit misunderstood and misrepresented here myself. But I don't think we're ultimately on such different pages. However, I really wasn't looking for an argument, so I'll bow out here. Respectfully.

All the best to you, Tony. I'm glad you're enjoying the music. I am as well. Peace to you.

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